Deleted Old Site - Relaunched on Same Domain

[winefolly]

Now I have a bunch of links that are dead. (45 to be exact) What should I do? Rebuild the links, 301 redirect them to the homepage, 410 them?

I didn't get a lot of external traffic from the links (maybe ~500 uniques/mo). Of that traffic, most of the users would bounce, my SEO wasn't very good so the content they received wasn't as relevant as it could have been. I'm not really worried about losing the traffic, but rather minimizing any penalty from google.

[lavellester]

Hi,

301 them to corresponding pages on the new site if possible.

[winefolly]

They are pretty specific and I'd hate to mislead people into content that isn't the same. Would I have to worry about google thinking I'm trying to cloak the content?

[lavellester]

In a way 301'n to the home page is kinda the same difference...

I guess its a question of how much those back links are worth to you/your site.

What about creating really user friendly 404 pages....Not easy to say without understanding the difference in the structure/content of your site but maybe keep the old content in place with a nice message that makes it clear the new content is over in 'these new pages'

Hope this helps.

[KaneJamison]

Hi Justin,

Ideally all links would be 301'd to a corresponding page on the new site. Your "penalty" isn't going to be a penalty so much as a step backwards in past SEO efforts. Neglecting to 301 the pages with links will certainly do more harm than implementing the redirects to less-than-ideal pages.

45 isn't a tremendous amount to deal with, and they don't all have to go to a corresponding page, though that would be the best approach. If there is similar content on your new site, redirect to that, and if there' s nothing remotely similar, then just send it to the homepage and move on (unless you have plans to create future content that is similar).

Use Google Webmaster Tools, Analytics, and Open Site Explorer to determine which pages need to be redirected the most.